Dear Reader: we’d like your input!

A few weeks ago, Erin highlighted an Eco-Driving Index that the University of Michigan created to track the emissions profile of new cars for sale. It seemed like it caught some of readers’ attention… until we realized that there was a rather informative discussion taking place on lawn mowers (see comments if you’ve been thinking about making the switch to a push mower).

While we strive to reflect on things or events that are of interest to you, it’s always most useful (and inspirational) when you help direct the conversation.

Post in the comments below on topics you’d like to hear about or ask a question that’s been on your mind!

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Hello TerraPass,
Having followed your e mail postings and been a user of your service for a few years now, I would suggest the need to talk about being resilent in our local communities. Big box issues like the tar sands pipeline and the new push for ‘drill baby drill’ for now gas as well as oil-needs to be defined in a local way. You know, how does fracking destroy our quality of lives in our communities, how does the death of oceans and aquatic life affect our local ecomony? Give the pros and cons, talk about how a pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico enriches our local lifestyles, if at all. Maybe talk about local biodigesters where a communties food scrap can be made into energy or how a local tree planting co-operative can share the abundance of it’s resources with it’s community. Finally, being a Christian Ecologist tell this story as well because this needs a balance for persons of faith regarding other believers goofy denials with reference to climate change.
Thanks for the chance to comment.
Dennis McHale
Tree Hugg’rs Ball
Canyon Land Conservation Fund
Citizen

Bikes are what I’m in to. I have pretty much eliminated use of the car for my daily stuff, just for oddball events with the whole family on short notice way across town.
Composting, rain barrels, rain gardens, native species landscaping (all part of backyard conservation). Also increasing our rate of recycling, to save energy and natural resources. Pick up some extra trash and recycle it every day and move the needle visibly at the margin of your own eco-footprint.
The sixth great extinction now underway, with human beings as the cause– and related loss of biodiversity keeps me up sometimes. There’s an international biodiversity treaty and guess which one or two nations have not signed on to it, and why? (hint, it went down similarly to the global Kyoto treaty)
What fires me up? Biomimicry as a potential clue for designers and engineers and the rest of us to work and live more in harmony with natural systems.
Also I am fascinated by what we do and don’t know about soil, the basis of fertility and our terrestrial food chain/ecosystem. Biology, chemistry and symbiosis with the decomposers. Mess that up and we are really S.O.L. Soil carbon content– and biochar– can we fix carbon more simply than by deep-injecting CO2 into wells at great expense? Terrapass could do some biochar projects with ag waste to increase soil fertility and fix carbon.
Let’s get on it.

RECYCLING. I’m in Pennsylvania and I want to read some discussion about ideas to fire people up about taking the time to recycle — and for companies and hotels and others to provide recycling bins.
I’m not for more rules (who is?), but GEEZ, shouldn’t each of us feel compelled to recycle AT LEAST the easy stuff like bottles and cans? And shouldn’t every Holiday Inn or Best Western or Motel 8 feel compelled to have a blue recycle bin in each room? If California and Canada can do it, why can’t Pennsylvania and New York??

What keeps me up at night?
The ominous signs that my daughter will face a future of decreasing quality as humanity undermines the viability of life on Earth with it’s own numbers and ignorance.
It’s a simple matter of compound growth. It took humanity 200,000 years to reach 1 billion people. Today, we’re adding 1 billion every 12 years. We’re going to peak, of course, at around 9 to 9.5B mid-century. My daughter will celebrate 40 then.
Will we still be trying to pump enough oil and natural gas out of the ground to run what we’ve been running the way we’ve been running it?
Will our economies face the awful effects of a remorseless annual decline in oil production before we’ve transitioned to sustainable fuels, farming methods and modes of transportation?
Will rising food prices lead, as Lester Brown predicts, to a critical number of failing states that causes a global economic collapse?
Will we have failed to avert a runaway warming trend with methane belching from the northern tundra’s as they defrost?
I sure as hell hope not, but:
I don’t see anything near the clarity and immediacy needed to meet these existential challenges.
I hear very few economists connecting the dots between the chaos in the Middle East and drought-driven food prices.
I don’t hear our president summoning the nation to the true challenge and promise of a sustainable future.
I don’t even hear the liberal media express much alarm.
That’s what keeps me up at night.